


the danger is i'm dangerous

by SpineAndSpite



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Biting, Blood Drinking, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-09
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-01-15 09:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12318180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpineAndSpite/pseuds/SpineAndSpite
Summary: A hand slaps against the glass.Akira’s nerves jump and spark, and if he’d been in a Palace, Arsene would have burst from his back like a pair of wings. At first he just sees two disembodied points of lights above grasping hands, but then he realizes those lights are eyes, and they are set into a face he recognizes(a shadow's attack has an unexpected effect on Akechi. Akira helps him deal with the aftermath.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so...this is a vampire fic, but the thing is...it's also kind of a fix-it fic. STAY TUNED.

Some Mementos nights are rougher than others. 

The tunnels beneath Tokyo are always a gamble, their layout unpredictable, their magic less stable than a Palace’s. The shadows in Mementos tend to be powerful, unexpectedly so, leaving Joker to make the inevitable decision every few floors. Do they call it a night, or do they press on to the next platform? 

He tends to play it safe, especially on school nights, but today the spoils have been fantastic, the shadows particularly willing to cooperate or--barring that--particularly willing to lay down and die. At this rate Joker will have enough to get everyone a new gun just in time for Halloween. The owner of the airsoft shop had even promised them a discount in honor of the holiday. 

Then, of course, there is the newest member of their group to break in. 

“You bring me to the nicest places,” Crow says, the first time he follows Joker through the turnstyle, treading that perilous equilibrium between flirtatious and assured. As usual, he seems delighted by the Phantom Thieves, and as usual, Joker wonders how much of it is an act. 

“Try not to get lost,” Joker says, matching his smile. They are playing a long con, he and Akechi.  
It makes the others tense, he can feel it. 

“I can’t change the way I act toward him,” he’s explained more than once. “He’ll get suspicious.” Though it’s true that if he hadn’t been so keen to flirt shamelessly with the enemy (Morgana’s words, not his) if he hadn’t set this tone, they wouldn’t have this difficulty. 

Or would they? 

Even knowing who and what he is, that smile is hard to resist, a hint of friendly challenge with just enough rawness around the edge. Joker can’t fully parse the layers of what he feels when Crow looks him up and down. But it’s possibly why when Skull swings his bat up onto his shoulder and asks, “Are we packing it in, Leader?” Joker hesitates. 

He senses the anticipation in Crow’s body, the glow in his eyes, and says, “Let’s keep going.” 

“The shadows seem different on this level,” Mona warns them as soon as they hit the lower platform. He doesn’t have a mouth when he’s a bus, but his voice resonates around them, thrumming like the purr of the engine he doesn’t have. 

“Different how, exactly?” Crow leans forward over the back of the seat, close enough that his breath puffs warm against Joker’s neck. An innocent action, or a calculated one? Doesn’t matter --it still winds tight in the pit of his stomach. Emotions and reactions are heightened in the metaverse--you become a caricature of yourself, a reduction. It would be impossible to deny his attraction to Crow, even if he wanted to. 

“Just...different.” Mona sounds uncertain. “Be careful.” 

Joker shifts so his shoulder brushes Crow’s. Two can play at this accidental touching game. “Mona, whenever have I not been careful?” 

“Don’t give me that! Crow’s never been down here on a rainy day before!” 

“Yeah,” Skull says. “Shit gets weird down here.” 

 

And shit does get weird. Shit falls apart. 

The problem, Joker will decide later upon reflection, with having a nemesis is that you tend to develop an inflated impression of their competence. You tie their aptitude to yours.  
And Crow always looks so at ease, like every step has been planned out and perfectly executed. The elegant whip-quickness of his parries, the thick, radiant glimmer of his holy magic. 

But Joker should have known better. Akechi’s pattern is a sweeping swathe of competency punctuated by disastrous mistakes. Tiny oversights in judgment that cost him everything. It’s how they discovered he was their enemy. 

Now it’s how he dies. 

The shadow isn’t a particularly dangerous one--not large or quick or powerful. Just one of those little winged demon girls, with the lipstick and tall boots. It nails Crow with a blast of darkness, tendrils writhing up his body. He hits the ground hard. 

The shadow is on him immediately, pulling him up by the hair, tearing his shirt at the collar and biting into the bare meat of his neck.

“What the fuck--?” 

Skull kicks it in the back of the head, but its teeth are locked resolutely into Crow and when it goes down they both go down. 

“Stop.” Joker grabs Queen’s arm before she can unleash a follow-up attack. “They’re too close, let me--Principality!” 

The angel appears in glowing white, holy magic frothing up, Robin Hood’s immunity ensuring that the shadow takes the brunt of the attack. It shrivels and bursts apart into greasy streaks. Crow slumps, bleeding freely from the wound. 

“Crow, hold on!” 

Queen moves so fast it’s like she is a motorcycle herself, sliding down to her knees beside him. Skull finishes off the last of the shadows and Joker...Joker just stands there watching the bright gleam of Crow’s blood on the dirty cavern floor, feeling oddly hollow. 

\--

“Are you alright?” Ann asks later, when they’re riding the escalators back to reality. 

Akechi is very pale, chest rising and falling too fast. He keeps looking at Akira, little snatched glances that almost seem like fear. A healing spell fixed him up just fine, all signs of the wound gone. Still, his hand keeps twitching toward his neck, like it’s itchy. Which it shouldn’t be. 

“That was weird as hell, wasn’t it?” Ryuji mumbles. “Have you ever seen a shadow do something like that before?” 

Akira shrugs. No, he hasn’t, and yes, it was weird as hell. Shadow usually work within a very typical established framework of attacks. This shadow hadn’t. 

“It’s _Mementos_ ,” Morgana says from Akira’s shoulder. “It’s dangerous to assume that any rules apply!” 

Akira can’t help it. He looks at Akechi, who is still looking back at him. 

\--

“Is it raining out there?” Morgana patters over to the door. He kicks up onto his hind legs, squinting into the evening. 

Sojiro fidgets with his tie on his apron. “If all that yowling means the cat doesn’t think we’re going to get anymore business tonight, he’s probably right.” He strips the apron off and balls it up in one hand. Not an angry gesture, just a tired one born of long practice. “Close up early, if you want. I doubt we’ll get anyone else in tonight.” 

Akira has spread his books out across two tables, because he’d realized that over an hour ago. “You want me to heat up some curry?” 

“I’ll pass. I’m cooking for Futaba tonight, and I promised her I’d watch some new anime she wants to show me.” 

Akira says, “Dangerous promise.” 

“Tell me about it.” Sojiro scratches the back of his neck. “Well, have a good night. Thanks for your hard work.” 

The door closes behind him, the bells stilling, silence settling over the cafe. Akira does a few more algebra problems, then gets up to turn out the lights and flip the sign. Outside the night pools softly between streetlamps, the rain contorting into ripples. Somewhere in the back Morgana’s toes are tapping on the floor as he does skulking cat things Akira wouldn’t understand. 

He’s thinking about making himself a cup of coffee--he has a quiz in world history tomorrow and another page of math problems--when he hears something. Or sees it. Feels a shift in the air.

A hand slaps against the glass. Akira’s nerves jump and spark, and if he’d been in a Palace, Arsene would have burst from his back like a pair of wings. At first he just sees two disembodied points of lights above grasping hands, but then he realizes those lights are eyes, and they are set into a face he recognizes. 

“Akechi?” 

Akira unbolts the door before the alarm can overwhelm his snap instinct to assist. Akechi may be his enemy at the root of things, but he’s fought alongside him for long enough that he is a member of his team. And when it comes to his team, Akira can’t afford hesitation. 

Akechi stumbles, bringing with him the taste of the rain, the smell of motor oil and cold stone. His coat drips onto the floor. He’s still wearing his uniform, although there is mud splashed all the way up one side. 

“I killed someone, I think,” he says, and passes out. 

We knew that, Akira can’t help thinking when he watches him slump down onto his face. That’s the source of almost all of their current problems, Akechi going around killing people. 

But then he notices the more specific shade of the filth spattering Akechi’s uniform and realizes--that isn’t mud. 

Morgana skids in on four quick paws. “What the--is that _Akechi_?” 

“Yes,” Akira says, though he almost doubts it now that he can no longer see his face. He is always so put together--clothes pristine, hair combed and neatly parted, cut in a style that makes Akira wonder if he did it himself. That Akechi does not match this Akechi.

Of course, no Akechis would ever match. Akira isn’t sure there even is one beneath all those masks. 

“Is he dead?” Morgana asks, a stupid question because his chest heaves with stuttering breaths, but Akira understands. He just looks so utterly _fucked_ up. 

The silence of the cafe presses in on them as they watch Akechi take one last huge, shuddering breath, and then goes still. 

“What’s happening?” Morgana whispers. 

Akira hears himself say, “I’m not sure.” 

Morgana sniffs at the boy on the floor. Then he puts his little cat head down on his back, eyes gleaming in the cafe lights. “Oh god. He’s _dead_.” 

The breath compresses out of Akira, the very air seeming to tingle on his skin. He takes one halting step, then another, aware with every last nerve ending that the world has imploded in on him again, just like when Haru’s father had died on camera, or a man with glasses and a vein popping in his forehead swore he would sue. 

Somehow, in an instant, _again_. Everything has changed. 

Without Akechi he’ll have to rework all his strategies; he is a crucial element in their plan to take down Shido and exonerate themselves. But he isn’t thinking about that in the moment. All that blooms inside him is the knowledge that where before there’d been a boy who laughed and breathed and smiled at him, there is now a cooling corpse. 

Outside, a car trundles past in the alleway. Akira’s hands are reaching for Akechi but they don’t feel like they are a part of him. 

_When he said he’d killed someone, did he mean himself?_

Akechi sits up so fast that Morgana is flung off his back with a yowl. Water runs down his cheeks, the ends of his hair dragging scraggly and tangled against his neck. His eyes are the thick, bloody red of precious stones. 

He stares at Akira and Akira stares back. Morgana is making a sound not unlike a vacuum cleaner sucking up a sock. 

Akechi opens his mouth to speak, coughs, and spits something out into his hand. Two things. At first Akira thinks they are pills. Then he thinks they are little rolls of paper. They glint like ceramic, slightly yellowed. 

Teeth. 

Akechi’s eyes go round. Panic flicks his fingers to his mouth. The gaps should be obvious, but there aren’t any gaps. Instead there are two rows of perfect teeth, two of them gleaming and razor sharp. Akechi presses against one, the bed of his thumb splitting cleanly. This red is somehow redder than everything else. 

Akechi stares at the drop trembling on his finger. “Oh.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know the vampire lore in this is a little shaky, but just go with me here.

“Um.” Morgana looks at Akira, then the door, then the stairs, then back at the door. He seems to be considering bolting. “What now?” 

Akira can’t hear anything over the rain. “Well, he can’t escape from up there unless he jumps out the window.” It’s the second floor, and in the metaverse a fall like that would be nothing, but here, well--a broken ankle at least. 

But who knows, what with the fact that Akechi is apparently now--

“--A vampire, right?” Morgana cocks his head. “He’s definitely a vampire.” 

“We don’t know that.” Akira’s heart pounds so high in his throat the words can barely squeeze by. “Stay down here.” 

“Wait, what are you doing?” Morgana leaps up onto the back of a booth so they are, if not face to face, at least not face-to-ankle. “What if he attacks you?” 

“We’ve always known he’s dangerous.” Akira puts his foot on the first step.

“Yeah, but he’s a monster now!” 

_So am I_ , Akira thinks, flavored with Arsene’s laugh. 

The lights are off on the second floor, the view out the window streaked with rain, the room wide enough to hide any number of skinny detectives. 

He stands still to let his eyes adjust, subconsciously falling into a ready stance, weight on his back leg, arms raised. He can’t flip and cartwheel the way he does in the metaverse, but he isn’t totally defenseless. 

“Don’t come any closer.” The voice is small and round, like a marble, and strangely intonated. It strikes Akira that he has no idea where Akechi is from. He’s spent hours trying to read his mind and predict his actions, but he doesn’t even know his birthday. 

“Akechi--.” 

He sees him now, a jagged silhouette against the window. He’s torn his jacket and shirt down the front and it trails behind him like a train. He’s standing on Akira’s bed. Well, there goes that mattress. 

“Don’t,” Akechi says again, when Akira takes a step closer. “I’ll kill you. I already have plans to kill you. I’m going to betray you all.” A hard shiver runs through his body, like the wind thrashing at his clothes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.” 

He sounds drunk, deranged, mad in a way Akira didn’t know Akechi’s pleasant voice ever could. 

“We already know that,” Akira says. 

Suddenly Akechi is in front of him, it’s like the space between them was simply deleted. Up close his eyes are red pits, cheeks sunken. “I feel like I’m asleep. Or like I’ve been turned inside out and all the directions are reversed. This could be the cognitive world.” While he talks his fangs catch his lip and blood oozes from the corner of his mouth. “You aren’t my Joker, you’re some false Joker from inside my head.” 

Akira’s insides do something frenzied and mutinous at ‘my joker’. He can’t tell if it’s delight or disgust or some bastard child of the two. 

“I’m not either of them,” he says, mouth dry. “I’m not Joker here.” 

“You are.” Akechi teeters forward and Akira puts his hands up to catch him. “The rest of them, yes, fine, they all put on costumes and play at rebellion, but you--.” He rights himself, poised impossibly, leaning forward. “You’re different. You know that. You’re like me, we--. Fuck.” Akira has never heard him swear before. “You really do know, don’t you? You’ve known this whole time, you’ve just been playing with me.”

“You did the same thing,” Akira says, “To me.” 

“I know. You make me furious.” 

He doesn’t sound angry. He sounds ecstatic. 

Is this the real Akechi, or just another mask? His grin is radiant in the dark. He grips Akira’s arms so tight the tips of his fingers tingle. 

“What now?” he whispers. “A fight to the death? I have a feeling I’ll win. I feel--.” He rolls his shoulders, a tendon cracking. “Different.” 

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?” 

Akechi seems faintly surprised to be asked. He thinks for a moment. “I think that I want some coffee.” 

Akira finds the part of himself that wants to scream, wants to run, and knocks it brutally over the head to bury in a shallow grave, just like he had during the court hearings. 

“Drip or pour-over?”  
\--

“It must have been that demon. I can’t think of any other explanation.” 

Akechi sits in his usual place at the far end of the bar, legs crossed, shirt halfway buttoned. Initially he had just ripped off his ruined shirt and blazer, ragged tips of his hair tracing his collarbones, but Akira is feeling shaken enough without adding Goro Akechi’s nipples to his night. When he goes back upstairs to get him the shirt, he hears, “What’s wrong Morgana? We aren’t friends anymore?” 

“We were never friends! We were all faking!” 

Akechi says something back, too quietly for Akira to catch. 

Seeing Akechi sitting there, that self conscious little smile firmly in place makes him feel comforted by familiarity and also like he wants to slam his head against the wall, because everything is different now. The water begins to boil and Akira looks at the two cups set up on the counter and wonders if vampires can drink coffee. Then he wonders if that’s actually what Akechi is. 

Could it happen to any of them? Is it permanent? 

“Is that...whose blood is that?” Akira looks down at the discarded jacket. “Is it yours?” 

“No. I don’t know whose it is, but know it isn’t mine.” He wrinkles his nose. “From--from the smell, I think?” 

Akira picks up the kettle. “You think?” 

Akechi rubs his hands over his eyes, then pulls them away and looks at them like he doesn’t know what they are. “I’m...having trouble telling my senses apart. Smell is like taste, which is like touch. I can’t even tell if I’m looking at something or feeling it. Did I hear someone’s voice or just recognize their scent? You smell like coffee and cats and whatever you wash your hair with.” 

He smiles wide enough to show his fangs. That’s going to take some getting used to. His eyes are no less red than before. Akira tried turning on the lights but Akechi had hissed in pain and put his hand up, so he’s left everything off but the dim lamp behind the bar. 

Steam curls from the cups as Akira fills one, then the other. “When did you realize you’d--.” 

Akechi hooks an eyebrow. “Crossed to the other side? I felt strange since that shadow bit me. Even after I was healed, I knew something was wrong. Something was different.

“I barely remember going home, and when I arrived in my apartment--I-I think I fell asleep? But I may also have just lay staring at the ceiling. Or maybe I dreamed I was staring at the ceiling. I’m still not totally sure I’m awake now.” 

Is it just his imagination, or are Akechi’s eyes lingering on Akira’s neck more than usual? 

“I couldn’t stay in my apartment after that, my skin was crawling and I was _hungry_.” 

Now he is _definitely_ looking at Akira’s neck, but as always it’s unclear how much of that is for effect. 

“Are you uh...still hungry?” Akira asks. 

Another smile just wide enough to show the tip of a fang. He is already acclimating to his new physical reality, learning how to use it to his advantage. “I could eat.” 

Morgana makes one of those rolling meows of frustration. “I can’t believe you two! Just sitting there talking like this is any old day!” His tail jabs into the air in exclamation. “How can you be so calm?” 

“Morgana, hastiness is the first mistake of the incompetent,” Akechi begins. “No need to rush into things--.” 

“Oh, be quiet! I don’t have to pretend to think you’re smart anymore!” 

Akechi’s eyes go round. Anger flashes hot and red across his face. The muscles in his hands flex, tendons thickening. But then he settles back into the placidity that had tagged him as “Pleasant Boy” in Akira’s mind when they first met. “That’s fair, I suppose. I did just ruin all your careful plans, though by no real fault of my own.” 

“After we ruined yours!” Morgana snaps back. “Or--we would have ruined! Joker, when are the others getting here?” 

Akira blinks. “I didn’t call any of the others.” 

Morgana’s tail lashes. “WHAT? Why not?!” 

Akira shrugs. He isn’t sure what to do about Akechi, but the more people he gets involved, the harder it will be to keep the situation under control. This has always been true. As much as he cares for and appreciates every single one of the Phantom Thieves, things were so much simpler when it was just him, Ryuji, Ann, and Morgana. 

Morgana glares. “Fine! But if he starts trying to eat anybody, I’m running straight to Futaba!” 

He stomps up the stairs. Or does the cat equivalent, which is really more of a scamper. 

Akechi waits a few seconds before he says, “Just keeping me all to yourself, hmm?” 

“You don’t have to do that anymore.” 

“Do what?” 

“Play coy,” Akira says. He pushes one of the cups toward Akechi. “Flirt with me.” 

“Oh no?” Akechi crosses slender wrists, tapping a finger against the rim of the mug. “It seems to me that I can do anything I want.” 

_Then why don’t you show me the real Akechi?_ Akira almost says it out loud. 

Akechi tips his head back. His hair is drying frizzy and stiff. “So you found me out. What was your plan, exactly?” 

Akira watches him pick up the cup, then set it back on the counter. “I’m not going to tell you that. 

Akechi chuckles, light and affected. “Why? It’s not like it’s worth much anymore. Your plan, or my revenge.” 

“Revenge? Against who?” 

Akechi shuts his mouth. His eyes close, and he leans forward, the ragged ends of his hair brushing the countertop. “I’m--I’m not thinking straight, this--.” His hand trembles. Akira wonders if his skin is cold. “Months, _years_ of planning and now--.” That facade, that public face, is crumbling and what is left beneath is raw and wounded and delirious. “All destroyed, by _you_.” 

Hatred is snarled up in the word, but he isn’t sure who it’s for. Akira feels the bizarre impulse to comfort him, to tell him that everything is going to be alright. That’s horseshit. Nothing it alright. He couldn’t fix any of Akechi’s problems even if he knew what they were. 

“What does Shido have on you?” Akechi doesn’t seem like the sort to go in for money or power, though what does Akira know? 

Akechi ignores the question. “Why haven’t you thrown me out yet?” He is gathering his mask back into place. What good does he think it will do him, now that Akira has seen what is beneath it? 

“I just want to understand,” Akira says. Which is true, mostly. He doesn’t understand Akechi, and he doesn’t understand his own fascination with Akechi, beyond the fact that he is attractive and interesting and a complicated puzzle to sink his mind into. And maybe he doesn’t need any more than that. His libido doesn’t care whether Akechi is good or evil or fighting on the same side. When Akechi smiles, compliments him, even knowing the depths of his duplicity, it gets to him. He likes it. 

Steam has stopped coming up off of Akechi’s cup. “Your coffee's getting cold,” Akira says, because it doesn’t seem safe to say anything else. 

He looks at it, mouth turning down. “I can’t drink this. It doesn’t smell right. There’s something--.” Raw laughter catches in his throat. “--Something missing.” 

He meets Akira’s eyes. Buried beneath the coat of amusement he catches a glimpse of the hunger. The desire. It catches alight inside Akira; he thinks he’s finally identified an aspect of Akechi that is true. Almost pure. He feels an echo of it in himself--the ravenous, powerful need for something he can’t put into words. It’s just a longing that means revenge, justice, sex, violence--the visceral imperative to turn emotional turmoil into physical destruction. 

The knife for cutting slices of tea cake sits on the counter. Akira runs it under the hot water, and then drags it across the meat of his palm. 

It hurts--bright, electric pain. More than he thought it would. He’s gotten too used to how pain feels in the metaverse, just another sensation in a whole storm of them. 

Akira knows exactly when Akechi realizes what he’s doing, because his whole body leans toward him, like a sunflower seeking a heat source. 

“What--why?” His voice comes out in sticky stop-actions. “You--.” 

Akira lets the blood well up, falling drip by drip into Akechi’s cooling cup, turning the coffee a darker brown. The sound of the drops is swallowed by the rain on the window. 

“I can’t believe you did that,” Akechi says. 

Akira shrugs. It’s not honestly that weird, considering what his life has been for the last few months. Feeding his enemy his blood in a cup of coffee is not even really in the top five of weird. Maybe the top ten, along with carrying a cat in his bag and spending his free nights making lockpicks. 

“Let no one say Leblanc isn’t a full-service cafe,” he quips. He pushes the cup back to Akechi. 

That doesn’t even get a chuckle, and fine, it isn’t really a joke, but Akechi is no longer focusing on the coffee. Instead his eyes are wide and fixed on a spot slightly to Akira’s left. 

No, that’s not right. 

He’s staring at Akira’s left hand, where blood has pooled and begun to run down in thin spiraling ribbons. 

Akira only has the chance to say, “ _Shit_ ,” before Akechi lunges. 

In the metaverse he would have absolutely seen this coming. That is the place for constant vigilance, for risk assessment and asset management. The real world is for preparation and waiting, endless waiting. He doesn’t expect anyone to go for his throat. 

But Akechi does. 

Or, goes for his palm, body weight riding Akira to the floor behind the counter. He pins his hand, fingers spread open like a starfish. He follows the path of the blood up further to the big interchange of veins in his wrist. Akira tries to claw him off, but he is embedded so deeply he doesn’t know what it will do to him. When someone is stabbed you aren’t supposed to let them pull the knife out, right? The exit wound can cause more damage. 

His personas thrash against the cage of his mind, trying to come to his rescue. But in reality they can only be suggestions, phantom thoughts. 

The pain is piercing, breathtaking, but it is quickly subsumed by a warm numbness that spreads through his whole body. He is floating on smooth waves, not pain, not pleasure. Just--rest. He can finally just let himself go. 

_Just stay calm_ , something whispers. Something soothing and warm and wonderful. 

He barely even notices when Akechi moves from his wrist to his neck. 

_Just rest_. 

No. 

No, because if there is one thing he has experience with it is goddamn foreign presences in his head. He hasn’t come this far, harnessing the power of countless manifestations of the human psyche, to be brought down by a fucking vampire detective. 

He strains against the gravity of the bite, hand shaking so badly it takes four tries to punch in his unlock code. Akechi is above him, making low, desperate, viciously sexual noises. 

The phone slips in Akira’s clammy fingers, a tiny rectangle of glass that has become the whole focus of his world. He taps a knuckle in the center of the screen, trusting muscle memory. And that’s it. That’s all he’s got. 

His vision is going, but he can still feel the wrench in his stomach, the weightlessness as the world is painted over in swirling red and black. He has just enough sense to think _protect me_ , and then add, _but don’t kill him_. 

_That’s not how this works_. 

Joker’s consciousness is borne away by the sound of beating wings.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I'm a lying liar who lies. Both about chapter 3 coming out on Halloween, and that it would be the last chapter. There's gonna have to be an epilogue because I am incredibly long-winded.

The distant, lonely music of the Velvet Room reaches Joker just before the solid weight of the chains. He must be the only person in the world who finds waking up in captivity comfortingly familiar. It’s drafty and bare and overwhelmingly spooky, but at least he always knows what to expect. 

Except for today. Today is different. 

His two diminutive jailers are absent, and so are there accoutrements--the guillotine, the whips, the gallows. Instead only Igor is here, seated on his stone throne, stroking his chin in extravagant perplexity. 

“Things have certainly taken an unexpected turn. Here I was thinking one of you would certainly destroy the other, but instead--.” He chuckles. “Well. I suppose we’ll see, won’t we?” 

Joker tries to respond, but the dream is already fading. He can’t remember what he was doing before he’d gone to bed, but even before he is fully awake he knows something is wrong. It’s too hot. He’s about to mumble at Morgana to turn down the space heater, when a voice that definitely does not belong to his cat says, “He’s my father.”

Joker blinks his eyes open. The lids are heavy. In fact, every part of his body is awash with a strange lethargy, like he’s coming out of heavy sedation. He sees nothing but the pale shimmer of fog, feels nothing but the wet heat pressing in on him. “What--.”

A figure steps out of the fog, stripped down to nothing but a towel around his waist. Water beads along his bare shoulders and down his chest. “Sorry about the nudity,” Akechi says, though he doesn’t sound very sorry. “Just--that costume is unbearable in a place like this.” 

Joker follows Akechi’s nod to the pile of white and gold on the stone floor. The plague mask glints on the top of the pile like a planted flag. They are in the metaverse. 

Right. Of course. Akechi has fangs, Akechi attacked him--

Joker gropes for his neck, but there is no wound. His wrists are smooth and unmarked, even the self-inflicted slice on his palm is gone. 

“How--.” Too many questions crowd together in his throat. _How why where._

Akechi doesn’t give him a chance to ask any of them. “I’ve never seen a persona act independently of its user before. I guess you really are special.” 

“What--.” 

It’s then that Joker realizes that it isn’t exhaustion holding him in place. It’s two strong hands around his middle, each tipped with a vicious black claw, gleaming wetly metallic. 

“Arsene--?” 

Arsene makes a noise halfway between a laugh and a growl, the body behind Joker vibrating with it. His weight is less than it should be, insubstantial, half-ghost. Joker has never been near him when they were not in the heat of combat. He smells like blood and leather. 

“He refuses to leave you alone,” Akechi says. “I don’t think he trusts me like you do.” 

“If we trusted you,” Arsene’s voice seems to come from a distance, rolling out like thunder. “Your clothes would not have transformed. Ours have not.” 

Joker looks down. Arsene is right. He’s still in the pullover and jeans he’d been wearing at Leblanc. 

“I don’t think the metaverse knows what to do with me,” Akechi says. “Am I a human, a shadow?” He bares his teeth, and even through the steam Joker sees the perfect pinprick gleam of his fangs. “Something else?”

Even the fact that Joker has been thinking of him as “Akechi” and not “Crow” is indication that things are different. Usually the metaverse skews his perception, makes him view his companions as if they were their costumes, makes him think of himself as “Joker”.

“Where are we?” he asks. “We’re in the cognitive world, right? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” 

Arsene moves against Joker’s back. It’s bizarre to feel him as such a strong presence. Typically he is momentary, a trembling shock of exhilaration, a shot of smooth liquor. 

“I’m not certain.” He tips Joker forward until he is standing under his own power. “I do not know any more about this world than you do, I simply understand it on a different level.” 

“I guess.” Talking to Arsene aloud is strange in a way Joker can’t quite describe, like using a limb he didn’t know he had. “This--how far is this from Leblanc?” 

“We traveled a long way to get here, but I assume you mean in physical distance. We are certainty far away in terms of ideas, but close temporally.” 

“The bath house,” Joke guesses. Right across the street from Leblanc spatially, but in the metaverse one travels mostly by concepts, thoughts linked to one another. How had they ended up here? He looks over his shoulder to consult his better half, but Arsene is gone, flurried away into the whispering, miasmic heave of the metaverse. There is nothing here but the rising vapor of the communal baths, no sponges or showers or benches, where the last time he’d been here he’d watched a little boy teach his father a rhythmic clapping game. 

Father. 

_He’s my father_. 

Had he dreamt that? 

“Akechi, did you--.” 

But Akechi is gone as well, a distant ripple of color in the steam. Joker hesitates a moment before slipping out his t-shirt and jeans. Weighing modesty against wet denim, there is really no contest. 

Joker has never been wet in the metaverse before, and it’s like every other experience in the cognitive world. Familiar, but infinitely alien, a mirror-flip of standing in waist-deep water. Both more present but also less, as if his body is the thing that’s different, instead of the world around it. 

He follows the movement in the mist, and at first it feels like he isn’t getting closer, but then, abruptly, he is. Akechi is right there in front of him. 

“What did you mean?” 

The water laps at Akechi’s bare stomach, coming to just below his navel. “Did you know cognitive clothes do not come with underwear? I’m surprised none of us have ever noticed any chafing.” 

“You aren’t going to distract me with nudity,” Joker says. A lie. He’s already distracted. “What did you mean, he’s your father?” 

“I mean exactly that.” Akechi gathers his damp hair over one shoulder. “Shido is my father. I’m the bastard son he threw to the wolves.” He’s waiting for Joker’s reaction, but when he doesn’t give one, he drops his eyes to the surface of the water. “You didn’t see it coming? Honestly, it’s rather cliche, isn’t it? So obvious I was counting on that to keep you from guessing.” 

“You don’t look like him,” Joker hears himself say. 

“What, not bald enough?” Akechi laughs, desolate and blank as the mist. “Believe me, I’ve done my research.” 

Joker’s fingers feel weightless, shock tingling to their tips. This is certainly not the most surprising thing about Akechi; he’s a teenage detective, TV personality, and--very recently--a vampire. But this--this feels wrong. A gnawing awfulness; it’s there in Akechi’s voice and his eyes. Not magic, not some nefarious scheme to take over the world. Just a lonely boy in a universe that doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. 

“And that’s why you did all this? To help your father?” 

Akechi’s eyes narrow and he does what he did in the attic--moves between blinks. 

“I _despise_ him,” he growls. “I want him to suffer.” 

“So you became his assassin?” 

“I had a plan!” The shout echoes in the hollow dark. “I had a plan,” he repeats, quieter. “I was going to dethrone him, I was going to famous.” 

“And you were going to use us to do it.” 

“Yes.” His whole body leans toward Joker. “I’ve become quite adept at betrayal. But it was nothing personal.” 

“You killed Haru’s father,” Joker says, gathering his resolve not to step back. “That seems pretty damn personal.” 

“He deserved it!” Akechi snaps so loud that it seems to surprise even him. He laughs. “I have a problems with fathers, yes, but he was an abusive liar planning to sell his daughter to the highest bidder. The world is better off without him.” His eyes narrow, shrewd. “I know you agree with me. Isn’t that what the Phantom Thieves stand for? Punishing evildoers? Who are you to lecture me about the rule of law?” 

Joker says, “We don’t kill people.” 

Akechi laughs at him. “No. You just break their minds and force them to give a confession they don’t mean. The metaverse agrees with me, Joker! I don’t have a Palace! My desires, whether good or evil, aren’t distorted. If I’m a monster, well. I’m not the only one.” He flashes fangs. “You’re delicious, by the way. Just thought you should know.” 

Heat hits Joker in the face and neck, and this he _definitely_ feels. Akechi is talking about his blood, he has to be, but then he sees how Akechi is looking at him and thinks, maybe not. “You’re...what are you doing?” Because Akechi has rested his finger on the knob of bone above Joker’s hip. 

“Hmm...going crazy, I think.” His thumb draws a smooth line over Joker’s stomach, and the flash of heat that draws to the surface is utterly disproportionate to the pressure of the touch. “Ignoring consequences, making decisions out of desperate nihilism, etcetera.” 

How can he continue to talk like this in this situation? Joker can barely think. He should probably be more afraid than he is, but Akechi is so close, the heat of the water surrounding them, his own frenzied heartbeat shaking him inside. He and Akechi are almost the exact same height, and he’s wondering if kissing a vampire is a good idea, but then it’s too late because it’s happening. 

Akechi’s kisses are different. Out of character. There’s no artistry to this--it is all blind earnestness, all hunger. His teeth nick Joker’s mouth and then the kiss tastes like copper. Joker’s pulse beats, adrenaline compounding the sensations. It reminds him of battle, but there’s no noise, no Futaba in his ear, no danger except for the boy sucking his bottom lip, thin fingers pressed to either side of his face. Joker tastes nothing but blood, feels nothing but the galvanizing sparks of pain, as his hands move to his hair, anchoring tight. Their mouths part with a smack. 

“I was so prepared to fight you,” Akechi hums, eyes hooded. “And then you had to be--everything you are.” His fingers clench tighter in Joker’s hair. “I can’t--I should have killed you all right away, especially you, but--.” 

“I know,” Joker says, and he does. They’ve had plans to bring Akechi down, but there was no reason to involve himself as much as he has, to get attached. 

He knows Morgana is right. He should have called the others; they could have decided what to do together. Now the situation has deteriorated. 

“I want to show you something,” Akechi murmurs, and shoves Joker backward. He braces for the splash, reflexes metaverse-sharp, but it doesn’t come. Instead the back of his knees hit something solid and he falls onto the soft shape of the futon. The scenery has shifted, in the way of the cognitive world. They aren’t in the bath house anymore, but they aren’t quite out of it either. The steam is still here, billowing among the scant thrift-store furniture. At first Joker thinks they’re in Leblanc, but this is someone else’s old crappy shit. He would have thought Shido would pay his assassins better. 

“You wanted to show me your apartment?” 

Akechi’s eyes light up, and with his newfound biology, that isn’t a metaphor. They literally shine. The distortion that heralds the appearance of a persona appears, and Joker tenses, in case Robin Hood is not pleased to see him, but it isn’t Robin Hood that erupts from the space behind Akechi. A zig-zag of black and white that almost hurts to look at, spidery limbs, great heavy braids of hair trailing down to brush the ground. This isn’t just evolution, like with the rest of the Thieves. This is an utterly different persona--Joker can feel it. 

“This is Loki,” Akechi says. “You weren’t supposed to see him until he killed you, but I guess plans change.” He glances down. “Am I making you nervous?” 

Joker’s clothes have changed. Or rather, he’s wearing clothes now--his long black coat and red gloves, heeled boots and mask. It’s such a familiar weight that he hadn’t even noticed. 

“I’m glad,” Akechi whispers against his cheek, where leather becomes skin. “”Because I’ve always wanted to rip them off you.” 

He does just that, ripping open Joker’s coat, tearing his white shirt down the front like paper. It feels like it should hurt, because the clothes are as much a part of Joker as his body is, maybe more. “I thought about this all the time, just ripping off your armor,” Akechi growls. “Tearing off that mask to make you show me something real.” 

It’s startling to hear his own thoughts verbalized, as if he is as much a mystery to Akechi as Akechi is to him. Akechi shoves him backward onto the futon, so he can yank his boots off, followed by his pants. As soon as they lose contact with his body, they fall back into the shadow-stuff of the metaverse. 

This is careening in a distinct direction. If you lose your virginity in the metaverse, do you lose it in real life? Not that he’s got too many options knocking down the door. Turns out going to class, working half a dozen part time jobs, and leading a vigilante group through an alternate reality doesn’t leave much time for a love life. 

_It’s not like anything normal ever happens to you,_ Arsene whispers. 

_Yeah, least of all you_ , Joker thinks back.

The futon is cool against his superheated skin, though the metaverse’s physics make lying down feel strange, floaty, every inch of his body flooded with energy that is waiting to come alive. He’s getting hard, and a thrill zips through him at the idea of what touching himself would feel like here. Or having someone else touch him. 

Akechi watches him like he is an unsolvable puzzle, the one thing in the world worth looking at. That--well. Joker can’t articulate how it makes him feel, but it definitely isn’t bad. He tries to get up, but Akechi plants a hand in his solar plexus and pushes him back down. Has he always been this strong? Something goes stuttering and hot inside Joker. 

He doesn’t know where to begin taking off that fucking catsuit. When Akechi had called Loki out, his clothes had changed too, a more subdued echo of Loki’s zigzags, with a mask that reminded Joker slightly of a rabbit. It doesn’t seem to have any zippers or laces, but when Akechi drags his hand along his side the material simply parts in his wake, like a snake shedding its skin. Akechi emerges pale and glowing in the metaverse’s not-darkness. There’s no light source, but that doesn’t matter. You don’t need light to see here. 

The suit fades away into shadows, and there’s just the two of them, more naked than anyone probably should be in the metaverse. Akechi strikes like a snake again, one moment standing beside the bed and the next on it, looking down at Joker through the hanging curtain of his hair. 

His fangs gleam wet. “I’ll do my best not to kill you,” he says. 

Joker pulls him down by his hips. “Me too.” 

Neither of them know the steps to this dance, but it isn’t a difficult one to learn. No one ever taught them to use their powers or lead a revolution or fend for themselves in a world that abandoned them, but they figured it out. Learned by rote and weightless repetition. 

Akechi alternates between pinning Joker’s wrists to the mattress and letting him loose to score stinging lines down his back. Every inch of his body is weaponized in the metaverse--Joker is a distillation of everything he hides from the light of day. Akira Kurusu, the quiet boy with the fake glasses and the black cat, who makes people feel safe, who goes unnoticed, he would never kiss a boy like Akechi until his mouth is bloody, but Joker would. He would never let himself be held down and rutted against by a creature with eyes like jewels, but Joker would. He wouldn’t let slender fingers yank at his hair, a cock push between his lips until he choked, but Joker would. 

It’s hard to hold onto himself in battle. The personas hum through him until he becomes a creature moved entirely by instinct, and it happens, here, now. Or maybe that’s just how sex works. He wouldn’t know. In porn it always looks really well coordinated, but this is a mess. Their bodies are slick, the barriers between pain and pleasure overlapping, and he flashes between moments of wanting to savage the boy on top of him, and wanting to hold him down, fuck him until neither of them can move. 

_Why not both_ , Arsene wonders, and every inch of Joker agrees.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been awhile i know, but we're finally done folks!

Akira rolls onto his side, toward the watery light of predawn coming through the apartment window. It tells him two things--that he is no longer in the metaverse, and that it has been hours since he vanished from Leblanc. Doubtless Morgana is frantic; he will have called the rest of the Phantom Thieves. He probably ran to Futaba as soon as he came downstairs to find nothing but an empty counter dripping with blood and spilled coffee. 

Akira has no idea what happened to his phone, and he isn’t sure when the real world had reasserted itself. He’d been a little bit busy, the evidence still stinging on his neck and wrists and inner thighs. There is a distinct ache in his lower back, and his lips are so chapped they're peeling. 

Did he sleep at all? There were moments that had felt like dreaming. It’s possible he hallucinated some of it, but which parts, exactly? His enemy turning into a vampire, or the part where they’d had sex in a hall-of-mirrors version of reality? The cat who talks to him? The high-heeled monster in his head? The criminal empire he has built in between pop quizzes and part time jobs? His criminal record? 

Everything from the last three years of Akira Kurusu’s life could be a fever dream. 

Questions crowd in on the corner of his awareness, concerns making themselves known in the grey light of sobriety. What are they going to do now? Their plans will need to be razed and rebuilt from the ground up. Could they still all be friends? _We were never friends_. 

But what are friends, exactly? People you spend time with, confide in, rely on? They’ve done that for weeks, even if it was an act on both sides. None of the things Akechi told him last night were anything resembling casual. Akechi has been an object of obsession for so long, crowding his thoughts, pulling him in with a dimpled smile and admiring eyes. 

Honestly, knowing that Akechi wants him, has wanted him for months, had sated himself last night past the point of exhaustion, is gratifying. But it still doesn’t answer the most pressing question--what now? 

He shoulders delicately out of Akechi’s grip and sits up on the edge of the bed. It’s chilly in the apartment, but he flushes hot as Akechi’s eyes go dark with hunger. Both kinds. 

Whatever. Akira may only be seventeen and he may be up against forces beyond his control, but he’s still the leader of the Phantom Thieves. 

“How absolutely set are you on your plans?” 

Akechi narrows his eyes. “How do you mean?” 

“Your plans. To destroy your father. To reveal him as a liar and a fucking son of a bitch. Are you open to constructive criticism?” 

-

Akechi lends Akira clothes; jeans and an argyle sweater. They are almost of a height, their bodies built along similar blueprints, as if their similarities of temperament and circumstances were not enough. The rain has stopped overnight, and the city is awake. They walk side by side and stand pushed into a corner of the train together. Akechi closes his eyes and takes slow breaths. The morning light doesn’t bother him and Akira catches the vague outline of his reflection in the train window. So the rumors aren’t true. Or they are true, and Akechi isn’t an ordinary vampire. 

Leblanc is closed when they arrive, but it is still full of people. Akira’s people. Even Sojiro is here, phone held anxiously to one ear. He hangs up as soon as they come in. Everyone talks at once, Morgana’s voice rising up over everyone. “I told you! I told you he was with him!” 

Akira waits until the volume drops enough to be heard without shouting down his cat. He can feel their eyes on him. Yusuke and Ann will notice he’s wearing Akechi’s sweater, and Makoto will notice the marks on his neck and wrists that the sweater doesn’t cover up. Sojiro must have had to clean up the disaster in the cafe this morning. 

"So, uh." He scratches at the back of his head. “Funny story.”  
\--

Shido, the future Prime Minister of Japan, hates a lot of things. For instance, he hates the color of the walls in his current office--a dull off-white. He hates cats, children, and diet soft drinks. Being talked back to or disobeyed. He hates people who don’t know their place, and he hates being made to _wait_. 

Goro Akechi is making him wait. He has not checked in and not answered the phone Shido gave him exclusively to ensure he is always available. It’s been nearly seventy-two hours now and not a word. He’s sent a few guys around to check on him, just a polite reminder to answer his goddamn fucking phone, but they found his apartment locked and dark. According to an old lady that lives down the hall, Akechi had left early in the morning with a handsome, foreign-looking young man with curly hair and round glasses, who had helped her take out her garbage. Maybe one of those Phantom Thieves, maybe just some kid Akechi picked up, though he is far too sensible and obsessively concerned with justice to just run off with someone. 

No, more likely he is dead. Unfortunate, but not disastrous. He was instrumental to Shido’s triumph over these ridiculous Thieves, but instruments could be replaced, even if it did take time to tune them. He had played Akechi beautifully. A pity, really. 

Shido checks his watch. Almost time for his weekly massage. Climbing to the top really does a number on the scapula. He’s just about to call his driver, when he notices something in the corner of the office that doesn’t belong. Two somethings, in fact. He sees a glint of white and one of gold, and a voice that says. “Are you sure? I know this isn’t how you wanted this to go.” 

Something cold and hard presses against Shido’s forehead and another, closer voice says, “Good enough for government work, I guess,” and shoots Shido between the eyes. 

-

They leave the body on the tracks of Mementos for the shadows to find, and they leave the white and gold masks Futaba had made them as well, to evaporate into the dream-stuff of the metaverse. Then they wander the streets of Shinjuku, two mad, magical boys who have just killed the most powerful man in Japan. 

“How do you feel?” Akira asks Akechi, as the wind drives his hair from his face, ruby eyes throwing back the lights of the strip. 

“I don’t know,” Akechi says, and Akira supposes that’s fair. They’ve climbed a hill out of the worst of the noise, and up here the roads look almost like Yongen. The gate of a neighborhood shrine across the street opens and shuts in the wind. It is an eerie October night, and it reminds Akira of being in a Palace, except in the real world the dangers are less predictable. 

“I think I have to go away for a while,” Akechi says, staring off down the road. “After enough time has elapsed for it to not look suspicious if I skip town, of course.” 

Akira almost says _I’ll come with you_ , but that’s ridiculous. He doesn't even want to, not really, even if Akechi would have him. It’s just the pressure of the moment pressing in. 

“What about you?” Akechi asks. “What about the Phantom Thieves?” They are standing close enough for their hips to touch, their hands brushing every so often. The easy intimacy is strange, but it isn’t bad. Does this always happen when you’ve had sex with someone? Or maybe when you commit murder with someone? 

Akira shrugs. “We’ll have to lay low. We’ll probably disband.” They no longer have the change of heart to force Shido to exonerate them on the national stage. Killing him was almost certainly been a mistake, or at least a lapse in good judgement. Maybe they should have just gotten rid of Akechi and kept on with business as usual. But there is no rulebook for this, no way to differentiate flawlessly the gap between right and wrong. Oftentimes it just feels like Akira is choosing between bad options and worse ones. He thinks, with some chagrin, that’s probably what being in charge is about. 

When Akechi had told his story, the rest of the Thieves had softened slightly--even Haru. But Akira doubts she’ll ever truly forgive him for bringing her father’s murderer into the fold. But then again, what has ever worked out the way he’d been expecting it to? 

Akechi leaves him on that windy hill in front of the dark shrine, a pale shadow in the night. 

Weeks later, as the rotted, twisting bones of Mementos rise into the Shibuya skyline, as people fall and scream and vanish, Joker leads the charge against a God from another world. As they climb the final crest, defeat the final angelic messenger, he feels a shiver echo down his spine. 

Skull shades his eyes against the setting sun. “Is that--?” 

Evening light gleams off the golden mask, the ivory smile. Joker raises a red-gloved hand in greeting. God or not, he likes their chances.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I wanted was for Akechi to just burn down his stupid plans and just help them kill the fucker. Anyway. This evolved a bit from my original vision, but I had fun with it. Hope you guys did too!


End file.
